Impact of Applied Positive Psychology on Wellbeing

Assignment 1

Name: Anisa Sher Shah

Student ID No: 844645

Introduction

For so many years psychology was focused primarily on human problems. Finally, around

late 90s Martin E. P. Seligman formed a positive psychology network, his plan was to gather

researchers and professionals who were working on human strengths and positive attributes rather

than focusing merely on human problems (Diener, 2009). The objective of positive psychology is

to begin a shift in the focus in psychology from only repairing what is wrong in life to also building

positive qualities (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi 2000). The author first outlines the field of

positive psychology, and discuss how and why this field became important. The author then

explains character strengths (one of the areas in positive psychology) in a nutshell and its impact

on human well-being, and discuss some of the research studies that focused on the prominence of

character strength on well-being complete with analysis of the research methods of these research

studies.

Understanding Positive Psychology

According to Gable and Haidt (2005), positive psychology is a relatively new field that

scientifically studies the conditions and processes that contribute to the thriving or optimal

functioning of individuals, groups, and institutions. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) stated

that positive psychology focuses on the character strengths, virtues, constructive conditions, and
process that contribute to well-being and positive functioning rather than negative or self-

destructive behaviours.

Positive psychology is described the scientific study of normal human strengths and virtues

and nothing more (Sheldon and King, 2001). They also said that positive psychology is concerned

with finding out what works, what is right, and what is improving in the average person. It

explores the nature of the effectively functioning human being, to discover adaptations and learned

skills, which will assist the majority of people to live lives of dignity and purpose despite all the

difficulties they face.

Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi (2000) explained that before the World War II psychology

had three objectives: curing mental illness, making the lives of all people more productive and

fulfilling, and identifying and nurturing high talent. However after the war, situation changed the

face of psychology. It dealt with only distress, while the equally important task of making the lives

of all people more productive, fulfilling, and nurturing the exceptional were neglected. This

situation does have benefits, there were many findings in understanding of and therapy for mental

illness, for example, Seligman highlight at least fourteen previously incurable disorders that can

now be treated, cured, or reasonably relieved. Psychologys empirical focus shifted to assessing

and curing individual suffering ever since that period, causing the sacrifice of preventive aspect

of psychology. Sheldon & King (2001) has similar view that there is a predominant negative bias

in traditional psychology because most their attention is finding for fixes, this prejudice prevents

psychologists from observing many important human processes, outcomes, and strengths. What

psychologists have learned over past decades is that the disease model does not move psychology

closer to the prevention of these serious problems. This is where positive psychology became

prominent. Positive psychology, with its aim to understands the full spectrum of human experience
by building up what we know about human resilience, strength, and growth to integrate and

complement the existing knowledge base (Gable & Haidt, 2005) can fulfil the preventive aspect

of psychology. Even further, by focusing on four pillars of positive psychology, which are virtue,

meaning, resilience, and well-being, positive psychology can also present a balanced model that

emphasises the need to enhance the positives and manage the negatives (Wong, P. T., 2011).

Many studies have shown the contribution of positive psychology. One of them is the

Findings from the Nun Study conducted by Danner, Snowdon, and Freisen (2001), it was indicated

that nuns who write with more positive emotion in their autobiography in their early adulthood

have better survival in their late life compare to those who wrote with less positive emotion.

Character Strengths as one of the areas in PP

One of the areas in PP is Character Strengths. Yearley (as cited in Park et al., 2004)

determined character strengths as recognising human excellence or instances of human flourishing

that produce to a tendency to act, eager, and feel that involves the exercise of judgement.

Character strengths are not a singular thing, but rather plural that isgood character is

formed from a group of positive traits demonstrated in ones thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. It

is an honest activity that involves choosing virtue for itself and seeing a justifiable life plan (Park

et al., 2004). Character strengths include the more specific psychological processes or mechanisms

that define the virtues, those aspects of personality that are morally valued, also used to refer to

components of the multidimensionality of good character (Park & Peterson, 2009). There are

several strengths classification, for instance, StrengthsFinder, the Virtues project, the Values in

Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths, and Realise 2. They have distinct intervention

approaches and outcomes measures as they have different elements and objectives as well as their
strengths definitions and classification (D. Quinlan et al., 2011). There are 24 character strengths

comprised in VIA which fall under six broad virtue categories: wisdom, courage, humanity,

justice, temperance, and transcendence (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

Several studies indicate noticeable impact of character strengths on well-being. For

example, Park et al. (2004) investigation of the relationship between various character strengths

and life satisfaction using VIA. They discovered that hope, zest, gratitude, love, and curiosity are

heavily correlated with life satisfaction. While modesty and various intellectual strengths were

only weakly correlated with life satisfaction. They also discovered that character strengths and life

satisfaction has monotonic relationship and there is no evidence that life satisfaction will decrease

when someone have excess of character strengths. This is a very intriguing discovery. Nonetheless,

this finding still have potential to be biased. First reason, as samples were obtained from World

Wide Web, we cannot accurately judge how representative the samples to be generalised to any

target population might be. Second, participants may be unfamiliar with certain words on the

survey which can impact to inaccurate answers (Ganellen, R. J., 2007). Third, data was gathered

once, makes this finding lack of causal conclusion. Lastly, this research relied solely on self-report

measures. Although the obvious benefits of self-report measures, there is a risk in relying solely

on self-report (Diener, 2009). Future research can add other methods such as experience sampling,

laboratory experimental, and longitudinal studies.

Park et al. (2004) finding was supported by Park and Peterson (2009), they found that

among both middle school and college students, a set of character strengths like perseverance,

love, gratitude, hope and perspective help anticipate and influence academic achievement, as it

able to facilitates the process of learning. Furthermore, bravery and appreciation of beauty have a

strong role in recovery from illness, and spirituality is associated with a life of meaning and
purpose. These findings imply that the encouragement of particular strengths would not only make

young people better internally, physically and more socially connected but also help them do better

and more productive at school and their future work.

A research study, conducted by C. Proctor et al. (2011), testing the outcome of Strength

Gyma character strength-based Positive Psychology Intervention programon the life-

satisfaction and well-being of adolescent students, on 319 adolescents age 12-14, also supports

previous findings. They demonstrated that students who participated in character strengths-based

exercises significantly increased their life satisfaction compared to those who did not participate.

They also obtained higher scores on Positive Affects and self-esteem, and lower scores on

Negative Affects at post-test compared to students who did not participate in the program. This

study is very useful for schools to develop their curriculum so they can have not only happier

students, but also to improve students academic achievement (Park & Peterson, 2009). However,

the result too has potential to be biased. The reasons are: this study relied fully on self-report

measures to assess outcome, adding other objective measures can result in more accurate

conclusion; students were also informed that their survey data would be used for assessing the

program and materials, makes higher possibility that they manipulate their report; the research

used was quasi-experimental treatment-control condition design which made it harder to control

the variables. Lastly, as the study was conducted in Great Britain, it may be biased if we generalise

the result to other countries in the world.

Conclusion

Positive psychology is nothing more than the scientific study of ordinary human strengths

and virtues (Sheldon and King, 2001). Positive psychology is not only as buffers against the

problems, stressors, and disorders of life, but also a necessity for human to optimise their full

potential to have a flourishing life. One of the areas in positive psychology is character strengths.

Character strengths are the base of optimal life-long development and flourishing, and has

significant implication for individual and entire society. Every human will face difficulties, it is

inevitable and nature of life, but by understanding their character strengths, it can help and ease

them to face those challenges. Character strengths also consistently and highly associated with life

satisfaction.

Positive psychologist still relies heavily on self-report measures, despite many benefits of

self-report measures, there are several drawbacks if we rely exclusively on this. Positive

psychologist also must use other methods such as behaviour observation, laboratory study or

experiment, interview, and physiological.

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